8.00pm, 3rd & 4th November 2010, Square Chapel Theatre, Halifax

7.30pm, 8th & 9th November 2010, Theatre in the Mill, Bradford

1st & 2nd December 2010, Bush Theatre, London (time tbc)

You will see the work of some of the most exciting new playwrights in Yorkshire. Plays with a panoramic view of the world as reflected by a new generation of contemporary theatre makers that will entertain and enthral you.

As the performances unfold, you will be drawn into stories that are sometimes personal, sometimes absurd and sometimes fantastic. From a Queen who has 15 minutes to live unless she can finish writing the book the King commanded her to write 300 years ago, to a naive assasin who wants to save Zimbabwe, each play provides a slice of life, a personal vision of the world.

All the writers have attended the Street Voices 3, an intensive writing course led by Madani Younis, Artistic Director of Freedom Studios with dramaturgical support from playwright Parv Bancil.

"I have been priveliged to witness the bravery, passion and commitment shown by the writers who are not afraid to say it the way they see it without fear and without compromise." - Madani Younis, Artisitc Director, Freedom Studios

"Street Voices is a great new initiative. It offers a considered context in which new writers can articulate their voices and find production." - Josie Rourke, Artistic Director, Bush Theatre

Click here for photographs and biographies of the Writers.

Click here for photographs and biographies of the Emerging Directors.

So Imagine...

The Mill: in six beats.

The Architecture of Time, Place, Memory and People.

Aesthetically The Mill project will seek to interweave through-lines between the past and present by playing with the compression and expansion of time to bring history, communities, memory and generations of people together.

BEAT 1: WHOSE VISION?

Interior Mill. Present day. A Building site office. On one of its walls, a clocking-in machine from the 1950s with row upon row of tanned punching-in cards, each with a different name written on it. A town planner and developer present a white model box, and glossy artist impressions of their proposed vision for a mixed usage development for this now derelict mill building. The developer uses emotive buzzwords; community, regeneration, investment, aspiration and employment. The town planner highlights the high level of security that would surround the building. Essentially, the model box shows a gated community that will sit in and amongst an economically deprived district of the city. Both the town planner and developer talk around this sensetive issue.

During the presentation sounds from another time of industrial machinery will gradually build, the voices of mill workers will be heard shouting above them. Irish mill workers from the 1950s first walk through the presentation one at a time and in pairs begin clocking out for the day. Their conversations are audible and hint at their moment in history. Pakistani mill workers are seen clocking-in for the night shift whilst the presentation for the mixed usage development continues.

BEAT 2: MILL COURTYARD – THE RITUAL OF PASSING ON

Whilst navigating the mill space, the audience hear a commotion from outside in the courtyard and look out and down through second floor windows of the building. 

A waiting hearse is seen. Forty men and women stand tightly packed around a coffin. They reflect the true diversity of mill workers from over the years and those that inhabit them now; some are seen in religious dress, others in their work uniforms and some in contemporary clothing. This group of people represents half a dozen different religious doctrines. In turn each group sings in their mother tongue to the recently departed. Their voices echo around the courtyard. Their singing consoles one another. They are joined in the passing of one of their own.

BEAT 3: KEEPING THE BED WARM

Three cramped 1960s domesticated terraced interior front rooms sit side by side. Those that inhabit them and the language they use distinguish the rooms from one another. There is a room with Irish workers, one with Eastern European workers and the third with Pakistani workers. Each room contains eight men sleeping together; two are seen sharing a sofa and the others are packed like sardines across the floor. Night quickly turns to dawn and some of the men start stirring.  The first man awake in each room begins preparing tea on a small camp stove for himself and the others. As the others wake from their slumber they are seen wearing their every day clothes. Some have gloves on; others have two pairs of socks, and some wear woolly hats. Slowly workers from the night shift enter the rooms and take the places of the other men who slept by night.

BEAT 4: PAY DAY- FATHER & SON

The snooker hall reception counter doubles up as the desk from where mill workers are given their salaries.  The audience joins mill workers as they queue to receive their wages. In parallel to this the young men of the snooker hall use the counter to buy confectionery and exchange snooker cues. 

In these two opposite lines one seeks to create the idea of a Father standing next to his son at a different moment in time but sharing the same space. 

The audience each receives a wage packet and on closer examination it reveals the distinction in salary that was offered to mill workers on the basis of their ethnicity.

BEAT 5: 4 FOR £10, STREET PREACHERS & REMEMBERING WHY?

Around snooker tables a group of mill workers gathers. Some have received letters from home that they read attentively. The others who have low levels of literacy stand in a short queue as one of their colleagues acts as a scribe and communicates their messages to loved ones back home. We witness the reactions of their loved ones in their native countries receiving messages from the promised land of England.

Modern day. Young men play snooker in and around the mill workers. A Chinese woman carrying a large sports bag enters and approaches them. She opens her bag to reveal hundreds of pirated DVDs. The viewing materials range from films recently released into the cinema, pornographic films, Indian Cinema and the radical extremist films of Osama Bin Laden; all offered for sale at 4 for £10.

Time collides as both the mill workers and a street preacher sharing the word of God and asking for donations to his latest cause join the young men.

We will post the final beat next week.

FURTHER NOTES ON HOW THE COMMISSION CAME ABOUT

Freedom Studios is a relatively young company, based in Bradford, West Yorkshire and supported by the Arts Council of England as a Regularity Funded Organisation. Led By Artistic Director Madani Younis, the body of work produced  by the company to date has been focused on the creation of original plays presented within theatrical contexts. This strategy of presenting work in theatrical contexts allows the company to make connections with Producers/ Programmers/ Curators/ Commissioners and share the true breadth of our artistic vision.  The company’s strong network of Associate Artists who work across art forms inform the shared vision of the company in confronting theatrical and creative vernacular by challenging notions of form. The Sheffield Crucible Commission represents a significant milestone for Freedom Studios in demonstrating the company’s vision, and ability to use its creative processes to produce high quality evocative work across art forms.

WHY LEYLA?

The sum of experiences from relationships, the essence of which has been distilled in Leyla. 
The voices that are heard through Leyla are the real life accounts of love and love lost as told by members of staff at the Crucible Theatre. 
Leyla was conceived as a sculpture that would take an ordinary experience and allow for a moment of beautiful story telling to be shared with those that come to interact with it.
The name Leyla is a small homage to  Layla Majnun the classic 7th Century story from the northern Arabian Peninsula of star crossed lovers. 

WHY

WAVE AFTER HOKUSAI?

An expression of my relationship to the world around me: fearless, provocative, vulnerable and honest. 
Wave after Hokusai my conversation with  Katushika Hokusai’s iconic wood cuts of the Great Wave off Kanagawa, created during the 1820s. 
Wave after Hokusai was conceived as a sculpture that would allow audiences to feel enveloped by the still, powerful forces created by nature.

WHY WOOD?
With an elegant and proud architectural language running through The Crucible I was keen to create two moments in the building that would sit patiently and elegantly against its prevailing aesthetic. Wood, a living breathing material has always had an ability to tell a story for me, to be carved and affected to express the hidden vulnerable truth.

‘A gathering of some of the most of the most innovative and originally minded artists from across the UK.  An evening of sharing, explaining and platforming what the artists of today will be doing tomorrow.’ Madani Younis.

Interviewees have included Jatinder Verma, Artistic Director of Tara Arts and Parv Bancil, playwright.  Featured musicians include Lauren Spink, Tom Gee and The Not Quite Quartet.

Unit 4 is attended by a diverse audience of individual artists, stake-holders and funders who are interested in engaging in critical debate in response to pertinent issues in the arts.  Video footage captured at the event is posted on the Freedom Studios web-site and on Babelgum and Facebook.